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Amazon Claims Dramatic Kindle Growth

Seattle - Amazon.com
is claiming major growth with its Kindle device since it lowered the price to
$189.

While not
providing specific unit sales numbers, Amazon said in a statement 24 hours
before rival Apple reports its quarterly financial that the Kindle e-reader's unit
sales accelerated each month in the second quarter -- both on a sequential
month-over-month basis and on a year-over-year basis.

"We've reached a
tipping point with the new price of Kindle. The growth rate of Kindle device
unit sales has tripled since we lowered the price from $259 to $189," said Jeff
Bezos, founder/CEO of Amazon.com, in a statement.

"In addition, even
while our hardcover sales continue to grow, the Kindle format has now overtaken
the hardcover format. Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than
hardcover books -- astonishing when you consider that we've been selling
hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months," Bezos said.

The U.S. Kindle
Store now has more than 630,000 books, including new releases and 106 of 110 New
York Times Best Sellers. More than 510,000 of these books are $9.99 or less,
including 75 New York Times Best Sellers. More than 1.8 million free,
out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books are also available to read on Kindle,
according to the retailer.

Amazon.com said recent
milestones for Kindle books include:

Over the past
three months, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold
143 Kindle books. Over the past month, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com
has sold, it has sold 180 Kindle books. This is across Amazon.com's entire U.S.
book business and includes sales of hardcover books where there is no Kindle
edition. Free Kindle books are excluded, and if included would make the number
even higher.

Amazon sold more
than three times as many Kindle books in the first half of 2010 as in the first
half of 2009.

The Association of
American Publishers' latest data reports that e-book sales grew 163 percent in
the month of May and 207 percent year-to-date through May. Kindle book sales in
May and year-to-date through May exceeded those growth rates.

On July 6,
Hachette announced that James Patterson had sold 1.14 million e-books to date.
Of those, 867,881 were Kindle books.

Five authors -- Charlaine
Harris, Stieg Larsson, Stephenie Meyer, James Patterson and Nora Roberts -- have
each sold more than 500,000 Kindle books.